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FoodShare needs cash to `replant'

The Royal Conservatory of Music has a new neighbour that has playfully nicknamed itself the People's Conservatory of Food.

Its real name is FoodShare Toronto and it has been tackling food and hunger issues for 22 years.

But unless you've signed up for delivery of low-cost, fresh-food boxes, created a community garden, started a school salad bar, or rented an industrial kitchen to launch a food business, FoodShare has probably flown under your radar.

FoodShare puzzles people. It isn't well-known like the Daily Bread Food Bank and Second Harvest.

It doesn't have a sexy fundraising soirée involving top chefs. Other than a short-lived, public salad-bar event, it doesn't have a major fundraiser because it can't reconcile the need to charge high ticket prices with its "food for all" agenda. Its "Walk, Run & Roll for FoodShare" on June 16 raised barely $2,500.

The non-profit group needs the money to help pay for its forced relocation from an Eastern Ave. warehouse to a vacant high school on Croatia St. in the west end.

FoodShare got $1.5 million from municipal, provincial and federal governments to relocate because of development plans. Based on a $1.6 million construction quote, it planned to quietly raise $100,000.

"The good news was we raised $375,000 from our great individual donors," says executive director Debbie Field. "And the bad news is we have to raise another $400,000."

Renovation costs, of course, have a way of skyrocketing. But things are coming along beautifully.

See for yourself at FoodShare's monthly "tour and tea" the second Tuesday of each month at 10 a.m. Otherwise, here are highlights.

In October, FoodShare joined the Royal Conservatory in the former Brockton High School at 90 Croatia St., near Dufferin Mall.

To co-exist happily in the leased space without disturbing the musicians, renovations must be done at night.

The school's auto body shop is being turned into a warehouse, with truck access, to pack 3,500 Good Food Boxes full of fresh, affordable fruits and vegetables each month and to sort produce for 85 school nutrition programs. (More than half of the boxes are bought by people at or below the poverty line.)

Until the reno's complete, however, the Daily Bread Food Bank in Etobicoke is hosting all this work.

The Parkdale Neighbourhood Church, meanwhile, is hosting FoodShare's cooking programs until the new kitchen is ready.

At first, Field was thrilled to see the school's abandoned kitchen, but most of the equipment didn't meet current building and health codes and had to be thrown out. "Another reason we so desperately need more money," she admits, adding every room had asbestos.

But soon there will be two separate kitchens to house the Toronto Kitchen Incubator (that fledgling businesses can rent), a food youth training program and more.

Outside there are plans for a greenhouse to grow herbs, organic greens and seedlings that are planted around the city every spring.

FoodShare does all this work and much more with just 24 staff members (plus hundreds of volunteers).

"It has been stressful for us to be spread out over three locations, but soon we're all going to be reunited in our new home," says Field, who loves being part of a vibrant neighbourhood.

"It feels like a real expansion and a growth in our ability to have an impact on the city."

It's an exciting transformation, but at the back of everyone's mind is the fact FoodShare only has a 10-year lease from the Toronto District School Board. (It pays utilities only, but they are hefty.)

"People are saying already that we'll have to rebuild 90 Croatia around FoodShare because we'll never be able to leave," Field says.

And maybe it won't have to, if Field is able to change the Grade 12 diploma so that students can't graduate without food literacy.

"Our dream is that every kid in the city of Toronto will come by subway to this building in Grade 3, Grade 6 and some time in high school, and take age-appropriate cooking, greenhouse, gardening, composting, beekeeping and food policy workshops," she says.

FoodShare hopes the next generation will help change our food system. Until then, there is much work to be done.

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